Saturday, February 23, 2008

Baked Gooders

Time (for me at least) do catch up on life- do some laundry, do some cleaning, and if there's time: craft and bake!

Okay, it's a bit of a lie-I made this yesterday, but I gave myself a long weekend after spending too much time in dirty Saint John (the Detroit of Canada).

Anyways,

SPELT BANANA BREAD

This was my first attempt at baking in my oven, and I must say, this was honestly the BEST banana bread I've ever made. I tweaked this recipe quite a bit which usually is a faux pas for baking, but as i said, this worked out amazingly.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2c butter or margarine (I used marg.)

1c brown sugar (i used organic cane sugar which is coarser and not packed, but it was great)

2 eggs, beaten (You could probably use egg replacer just fine)

2 cups spelt flour (again, regular flour would probably be fine. I use spelt flour from the bulk barn and it isn't as heavy as regular spelt flour, which can usually be quite dense. No one who tried this even realized a difference)

1 tsp baking soda

a pinch of salt

2-3 bananas, mashed. (***** I used 2 large frozen bananas and I think this was the trick. I froze a few very ripe bananas a few days ago not knowing when I would use them and this was perfect. I think freezing them allows the natural sugars to act as an even stronger binder and it made the bread VERY moist)

optional: 1/2 cup chocolate chips, chopped nuts or anything you want!

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan and dust a bit of flour lightly so it slips out easily once cooled.

Take your frozen (or fresh) bananas and break into bits in a bowl. Mash them up and add the butter and sugar. Cream together all the ingredients.

Stir in the eggs.

Add salt and baking soda.

Slowly add the flour to make sure there are no lumps. The consistency should be smooth but not over-mixed. It will be about the consistency of a muffin batter.

At this point fold in any of the optional ingredients, but don't over-mix.

Pour into the pan and bake for 1hr. I checked it at about 45mins and turned it down to about 300/275 degrees, and baked for another 15 minutes. It will be done when a toothpick/fork comes out clean.

Let cool, and turn out onto a plate.

I know this seems like a lot of information for banana bread but it is actually so few ingredients and so easy to make, especially considering how many chances I made to the recipe. Definitely worth making and having with tea on a sunday afternoon :)

and on an entirely different note, have you ever seen that show "america's next dance crew" or something like that? It's like so you think you can dance but with crews and not solo dancers.